Current European refineries and civil infrastructures, like tunnels and bridges, are ageing, and therefore gradually become deteriorated, especially taking into consideration the current and future economic situation in Europe where large investments in renewing infrastructures are not foreseen. Then, it is paramount important to increase the efficiency and quality of inspection and maintenance activities in order to keep the necessary safety levels in these ageing infrastructures. To overcome this important challenge, PILOTING proposes the adaptation, integration, and demonstration of robotic solutions, in an integrated platform, which will be tested and evaluated in three large-scale pilots: refineries (Oil&Gas sector), bridges/viaducts and tunnels (Civil/Transport Infrastructure sector) with the involvement of all the actors that conform the full value chain. The developed platform will: demonstrate the application of robotics at scale in the domain of Inspection and Maintenance (I&M), reduce end-user commercial risks on the deployment of robotics in the sector, demonstrate capabilities and improve understanding of robotics uptake value, develop and support the related ecosystem around the piloting I&M operations, as well as, contribute to industrial standards in robotics for I&M. To achieve the above, PILOTING will develop an advanced robotic-based platform that will be deployed in the three industrial scenarios and demonstrate the real value towards the inspection and maintenance community as well as its high level socio-economic impact when applied at scale. PILOTING will establish large-scale pilots in real industrial environments to directly reply to main I&M challenges through the demonstration of: increasing rate of inspection and maintenance tasks, improving coverage and performance, decreasing costs and time of operations, improving inspection quality and increasing safety of operators.

With aging infrastructure in developing-and-developed countries, and with the gradual expansion of distributed installations, the costs of inspection and repair tasks have been growing vastly and incessantly. To address this reality, a major paradigm shift is required, in order to procure the highly automated, efficient, and reliable solutions that will not only reduce costs, but will also minimize risks to personnel and asset safety. AEROWORKS envisions a novel aerial robotic team that possesses the capability to autonomously conduct infrastructure inspection and maintenance tasks, while additionally providing intuitive and user-friendly interfaces to human-operators. The AEROWORKS robotic team will consist of multiple heterogeneous “collaborative Aerial Robotic Workers”, a new class of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles equipped with dexterous manipulators, novel physical interaction and co-manipulation control strategies, perception systems, and planning intelligence. This new generation of worker-robots will be capable of autonomously executing infrastructure inspection and maintenance works. The AEROWORKS multi-robot team will operate in a decentralized fashion, and will be characterized by unprecedented levels of reconfigurability, mission dependability, mapping fidelity, and manipulation dexterity, integrated in robust and reliable systems that are rapidly deployable and ready-to-use as an integral part of infrastructure service operations. As the project aims for direct exploitation in the infrastructure services market, its results will be demonstrated and evaluated in realistic and real infrastructure environments, with a clear focus on increased Technology Readiness Levels. The accomplishment of the envisaged scenarios will boost the European infrastructure sector, contribute to the goal of retaining Europe’s competitiveness, and particularly impact our service and industrial robotics sector, drastically changing the landscape of how robots are utilized.

HYFLIERS will develop two prototypes for the first worldwide hybrid aerial/ground robot with a hyper-redundant lightweight robotic articulated arm equipped with an inspection sensor, together with supporting services for efficient and safe inspection in industrial sites. Energy savings will be achieved by minimizing the time of flight and by performing the inspection while attached to the pipe. To ensure accurate positioning, guidance, landing and rolling on constrained surfaces such as pipes, the robot will rely on a control system also integrating environment perception, particularly for landing on the pipes, and aerodynamic control taking into account aerodynamic effects of the pipes. The system will also have multi-media interfaces for teleoperation, automatic collision detection and avoidance; a trajectory planning system that will take into account aerodynamic effects in addition to kinematic and dynamic models; and a mission planning system to optimize the use of the robot in the inspection. The technology results will be validated in the inspection of pipes, which is a very relevant short-term application. HYFLIERS will decrease the cost and risks of current human inspection in production plants, such as oil and gas, where it is estimated that about 50 000 pipe thickness measurement points are needed within a 3 to 5 years interval. HYFLIERS will eliminate the risks of accidental falls and the cost associated to the use of man-lifts, cranes, scaffold or rope access, which is many orders of magnitude larger than the measurement cost by itself. Taking into account that about 60% to 75% of inspection costs in this type of facilities is dedicated to ultrasonic thickness measurements, the project will concentrate on these measurements. The results of the project could be also applied to other industrial scenarios, such as power generation plants.

AEROARMS proposes the development of the first aerial robotic system with multiple arms and advanced manipulation capabilities to be applied in industrial inspection and maintenance (I&M). The objectives are: 1. R&D on aerial manipulation to perform I&M. This includes: 1.1 Based on previous partner results, developing systems which are able to grab and dock with one or more arms and perform dexterous accurate manipulation with another arm. Also develop helicopter-based aerial manipulators, with greater payload and flight endurance, and with a dexterous arm to provide advanced manipulation capabilities by means of force interactions and hand-eye coordination using a movable camera with another light arm; 1.2 New methods and technologies for platforms which can fly and manipulate with the coordinated motion of the arms addressing constrained scenarios in which it is dangerous to use the helicopter and where it is not possible to grab to perform I&M operation. 2. Validation of 1.1 in two applications: 1) Installation and maintenance of permanent NDT sensors on remote components; 2) Deploy and maintain a mobile robotic system permanently installed on a remote structure. To achieve the above objectives AEROARMS will develop the first aerial telemanipulation system with advanced haptic capabilities able to exert significant forces with an industrial robotic arm, as well as autonomous control, perception and planning capabilities. Special attention will be paid to the design and system development in order to receive future certification taking into account ATEX and RPAS regulations. AEROARMS is strongly related to ICT 23–2014: Robotics enabling the emergence of aerial robots, with manipulation capabilities to operate in industrial I&M, which will be validated in in oil and gas plants to reach TRL5. The consortium combines excellent capabilities in aerial robotics with leadership in aerial manipulation and key partners for the successful application of I&M.